Techniques of this disclosure relate, in general, to an assignment of tenancy to devices generally known as end nodes, endpoints or Internet of Things (IoT) devices.
The Internet of Things encompasses devices and networks that are IP-enabled and Internet-connected, along with the Internet services monitoring and controlling those devices. Such IP-enabled devices connected to the Internet may be termed end nodes, endpoints or IoT devices and include sensors, machines, active positioning tags, radio-frequency identification (RFID) readers and building automation equipment to name but a few.
Data exchange between programs, computers and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) is a vital element. Different programs, computers and processors are used in different environments. On the Internet, the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) is the basic protocol used in communication. TCP/IP takes care of assembling and disassembling the data to be transmitted in packets. IP handles the addressing so that packets are delivered to the correct destination and above TCP/IP, the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is used as a client/server protocol whereby a program may send an HTTP request to a server which responds with another HTTP message.
The Wireless Embedded Internet is a subset of the Internet of Things and is generally represented by resource-limited embedded devices, often battery powered and connected by low-power, low-bandwidth wireless networks to the Internet.
Current web service technologies have high power and large bandwidth demands neither of which are compatible with low-power networks. Recently, binary web service protocols have been developed for low-power wireless networks. A binary web service solution includes the use of a suitable web service protocol (such as simplified HTTP or a binary web service protocol such as Constrained Application Protocol CoAP) and an efficient content encoding (such as Efficient XML Interchange EXI, Binary XML or Fast Infoset FI).
An example of a network technology where Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication is widely applied is a low-power wireless network, such as an IEEE 802.15.4 based embedded and sensor network. More recently, as M2M devices have become IP enabled, systems have become more open by using IP as a networking protocol.
Following the introduction of IEEE 802.15.4 other standards were developed to standardize an IP adaption for such wireless embedded links. For example, the IPv6 over Low Power Wireless Standard (6LoWPAN) is a set of standards which enable the efficient use of IPv6 over low-power, low-rate wireless networks on simple embedded devices through an adaption layer and the optimization of related protocols.
The Open Mobile Alliance Lightweight LWM2M is a standard applicable to 6LoWPAN and is focused on constrained cellular and M2M devices. A Lightweight Machine-to-Machine (LWM2M) Bootstrap process is used to provide mandatory information through the Bootstrap Interface for LWM2M Clients so that they can perform the registration with one or more LWM2M Servers. During bootstrapping, a device (the tenant) may register with a cloud based server (a host), to access applications across a domain. A domain may be a logical grouping of devices and when the domain is exported to Domain Name System (DNS) then the domain value normally equates to the DNS domain name.
Tenancy may be classified as single tenancy or multiple tenancy. If a cloud based server provides a domain for a sole tenant or single entity, this is known as single tenancy. A cloud based server may provide the same or a similar applications to multiple entities or multiple tenants including those entities that are unrelated in the sense that the multiple entities own different devices or resources for different purposes. In such a case this is known as multiple tenancy and typically a cloud based server with multiple tenants will have multiple customers owning multiple devices.
Presently, a device is pre-configured before bootstrapping with its tenant name so that the device knows in advance which tenant name to use in registration with a device server. Such pre-configuration can be a costly overhead in both time and resource.